Oscar voters are out of touch, milquetoast, hopelessly middlebrow, and so old that they couldn’t even figure out how to e-vote, but it’s always been this way, and we still argue about it anyway. Even after Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, The English Patient over Fargo, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, etc. The list goes on, and we should know better. In 2013, no one should be surprised that the Academy’s choices are two parts wrong and ten parts boring, but if we’re going to bitch somewhere, it might as well be here. I may be a lot of things, but allergic to money isn’t one of them. And hey, as bad as the Oscars are, they’re still a thousand times better than the Grammys and the Emmys put together. So here they are, the best and worst of this year’s Oscar nominations. KNIVES OUT, SHITHEADS! IT’S TIME TO END SOME FRIENDSHIPS!

Best:
Django Unchained. After getting snubbed at the DGAs and WGAs, it’s nice to see Tarantino’s latest get some love from the Academy, even though the very things that make me love it instead of just like it – that it’s so gleefully vulgar and deliberately lowbrow – are the same reasons it won’t win and didn’t receive more nominations.

Worst:
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Les Misérables. I’ve already gone over in great detail why Beasts isn’t a great movie. Even in terms of movies that appeal hard to pedantic white liberal fantasies, Life of Pi did it better, and in a much nicer way (not to mention, it had a carnivorous island full of meerkats).

Les Mis is just… God, it’s so predictable. You had the choice of nominating less than 10 (you’ll notice there are only nine nominees this year – here’s a refresher course on why), and Les Mis still made the list? I think of it like this: There are times in my life when I’ll be riding my fixed gear down to my local San Fran latte shop listening to This American Life on my iPhone; and other times when I’ll be eating chicken wings with my bros while we watch football and trash talk each other’s fantasy teams down at the sports bar. In both instances, I’ll think to myself, “God, I feel like such a stereotype right now,” and try to change something up. Oscar voters… never seem to have that thought. “A movie full of famous actors with dirty faces singing French songs about poverty and trying to f*ck each other? Oh hell yeah, more of that plz.” Les Mis would be insulting to Academy voters if they weren’t so dumb. Les Mis can derelicte my balls, capitan.

Snubbed:
No Magic Mike? Are you kidding me? But I’m not surprised. It was inevitable that the Academy voters would only see the guy pumping up his blurry dick in the foreground, and not the nuanced, melancholy story about trying to find a place in the modern economy that those blurry dicks were framing. Looper? The Master? Again, not surprised, but the fact that Les Mis got in but not the best original sci-fi in years and Joaquin Phoenix’s most watchable performance isn’t going to go unmentioned here.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Best:
Pretty much this entire list. Christoph Waltz is the obvious choice, but also correct.

Worst:
The De Niro choice is a little weak, but it was easily his best performance in years, so I understand.

Snubbed: NO MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?!?! CALL THE POLICE, CALL THE REGULATORS, CALL YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY, AND ASSEMBLE A POSSE! YOU’VE BEEN ROBBED, MAN, ROBBED! That was the biggest softball of this entire goddamned year and you old stupid shrivs whiffed it hard, not that I’m surprised. I even would’ve accepted McConaughey in Killer Joe as a consolation prize for his superior performance in Magic Mike. Can’t see the forest for the trees, though. Typical. That aside, it’s terrible that you can only choose five in this category. Samuel L. Jackson in Django, James Spader’s mustache in Lincoln, John Goodman in anything… the list goes on.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Best:Helen Hunt, Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway was only in the movie for about five minutes, but she combined acting and singing in a way I haven’t seen before.

Worst:
Well, bar none worst is Sally Field for Lincoln. Nothing against her as an actress otherwise, but that performance made me cringe every time she was onscreen. This is your typical lifetime-achievement award disguised as praise for a particular role. Just looking at her in that stupid dress brings me down. Anne Hathaway. She was in the movie for five minutes and sang one song.

Snubbed:
Uhh… Rebel Wilson? I don’t know, man. This wasn’t a great year for female roles. I still haven’t seen This is 40, but Leslie Mann is always pretty fantastic.

BEST DIRECTOR

Worst:This entire category. Look, this award is stupid. The only fair way to judge a director is by what makes it to the screen, which would make this no different than Best Picture. How do you say someone is a great director who didn’t make a great movie, or vice versa? Were you on the set every day? Best Director is an award transparently based on prestige and hearsay. The only worthwhile thing about it is what it says about the Academy’s view of directors who got Best Picture nominations but no Best Director nominations. “Begrudging,” is the word that comes to mind.

BEST ACTOR

Best:Daniel Day-Lewis. Boring choice, also true. Joaquin Phoenix. I don’t think The Master works without his weird craggy face and quasimodo body. I also don’t know who else who could’ve made that character so simultaneously weird, alien, lovable, and hilarious. There are a lot of things I don’t know. No one denies this.

Worst:Denzel Washington. Flight was a bad movie in which Denzel gave a Denzel performance. We already know he’s an amazing actor, you don’t have to reward him for mediocre work. Hugh Jackman. Again, solid actor, but his nostril singing got progressively more grating as the movie went on, whereas Russell Crowe’s beer-gut delivery became strangely hypnotic. Those two were like two different-sized cats f*cking.

Snubbed:
Do I even have to say it? C-Tates, son. Tampa’s finest brought it this year. But honestly, these nominees are all pretty deserving, save Denzel. Karl Urban was also pretty great in Dredd, though everyone knows it had zero chance of winning anything. Still, not just any actor can make a character work when you never get to see his eyes.

BEST ACTRESS

Best:Jennifer Lawrence. I love her. Watching Brad Cooper reject her was infuriating. Quvenzhané Wallis. I hated the movie, but you might as well reward the only reason people liked it. She is crazy adorable. Please have a normal life and don’t become a child actress, Quvenzhané. Think Anna Paquin, not Lindsay Lohan.

Worst:Naomi Watts and Emmanuelle Riva, only because I refuse to see a movie about old people slowly dying, and I’ve never even heard of The Impossible. Is that the Tom Cruise one? Didn’t that come out last year? Jessica Chastain. I know, I know. But honestly, I left Zero Dark Thirty knowing zero about her character’s personality, other than that she was smart. Is that her fault? I think she has to take some of the blame.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Best:Django Unchained.

Worst:Flight. Possibly the worst pick of the entire Oscars, at least even-money with Sally Field. I’m honestly dumbfounded by this one. I understand why people love Beasts of the Southern Wild, even though I hate it, it flatters their sensibilities and gives old tropes a sheen of the exotic. But Flight? My screening audience was laughing at the dramatic posturing at the end. It makes alcoholism look awesome for 90 minutes, and then tries to make up for it with a cheesy speech. “Hmm, how can we illustrate this character learning a lesson? Ooh, I know, we’ll have him give a big speech about how he’s learned a lesson!” That is the opposite of good writing.

Snubbed:Looper. I shouldn’t even have to explain why.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Snubbed: The Master. Come on, cinematography made that movie. The rack-focus tracking shot of Joaquin walking along the waterfront was the most memorable shot I saw all year. That entire movie looked incredible.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Snubbed: Look, I know The Ambassador was way too edgy to get nominated (precisely why it was so good), but no Queen of Versailles? I’ve heard great things about Searching for Sugar Man and How to Survive a Plague (The Imposter and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, also pretty good), but Best Documentary is the most consistently wrong of all Oscar categories. Remember when they hosed Exit Through the Gift Shop and didn’t even nominate Anvil? Yep, same voters, different day.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

It’s hilarious to me that Les Misérables is basically an album of cover songs that includes one original in a blatantly transparent bid to be eligible for awards. And what does the Academy do? They reward it with awards! Shouldn’t art get penalized for that kind of presumptuousness? I don’t know, maybe it’s a great song, but I don’t even remember it. I sure as hell remember Ladies of Tampa though.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Really, no Moonrise Kingdom? Production design is what Wes Anderson does. Production design is the only reason we know Wes Anderson’s name. The Academy must really hate plaid. Which might be why the Academy and I can never be friends.

What we don’t talk about when we talk about Magic Mike is that CT’s romantic interest was horrible–not Olivia Munn, the other chick. She had the emotional range of an AIDS cat tattoo. Not that I didn’t dig the movie, but that was a pretty serious skidmark on the experience.

@Larry – I’ve been talking about her constantly, in fact I think I mentioned her in the Razzie post too. She’s the daughter of the head of Warner Bros. She also played a character on the final season of Rescue Me who had uncontrollable rancid flatulence after sex. She makes Keanu Reeves look like Sir Lawrence Olivier.

@SP I always feel the need to acknowledge the flaws in the things I love–it keeps me trill. Saving Reynolds Ryan had Ed Burns and Vin Diesel; Star Wars had Mark Hamill and Leia’s sporadic English accent.

Fourthed. But you can’t blame the academy entirely for the lack of Moon recognition, the studio didn’t even submit it for consideration. Kind of infuriating seeing as Rockwell definitely deserved a nomination.

I haven’t even seen The Sessions (or, more accurately, I’ve seen The Sessions as many times as I intend to) but I love me some John Hawkes. The entire Academy deserves a visit from the cock-punching robot for overlooking him in Martha Marcy Ted and Alice.

I’m equal parts surprised they made some good decisions and that Matlock didn’t get the most nominations. They call nominations “nods” because that constitutes maximum physical exertion for these ass gourmets.

We can set aside a time to not see it together. I was actually disappointed when I heard he was playing The Cripple, insofar as it seemed like a desperate awards grab. But if he needs to play an alcoholic paraplegic retarded English monarch at Dachau to get some recognition, so be it.

I understand the malaise of not being interested in it because it seems like an awards grab movie, but he is absolutely hilarious in it. His confessional visits with Bill Macy make it worth a rental.

But a fact that I think people are ignoring here is that William Earl Brown, aka Warren from There’s Something About Mary aka Dan Dority from Deadwood plays one of his caretakers (and is also pretty damn funny).

How you going to not see a movie with two Deadwood alums and Helen Hunt’s labia featuring prominently? HOW SIR.

Magic Mike for an Oscar???? Are you F’ing kidding me, what a joke? Stupidest movie all year. A film about young dumb male strippers, and one of them is so immature that he has to be bailed out by his stripper friend who has saved his money in return for getting the guys sister? What a pathetic waste of digital film………..

I think I get the Magic Mike love around here. It was better than it should have been. That being said it is still a bad movie. Sure MM deserves the nod but the dialogue between the rest of the cast was awful. And the story has Lucas-size plot holes.

I am shocked DiCaprio didn’t get the nom over Waltz. Waltz was good in the movie, but it was much too calm and charming and a little bit of the white man’s burden played in. DiCaprio had his best performance EVER! and the academy ignores him? Thought he was their new golden boy.

Also, how did Les Mis and Ted (wow) get nominated for best song, but not Django? The music in Django, especially the opening original score, was some of the best in years.

Django was not an original score. The opening title music was the main title from the original 1966 Django by Luis Bacalov. Most of the rest of the music was Morricone, who amazingly never won an Oscar until he was given an honorary award in 2007 (criminal).

And you’re still hoping that after this generation of old farts dies it’s going to get better? We’re talking about people educated in such a way that it’s impossible for them to possess flair or common sense, whatever how old they are.

I brought DiCaprio up on another thread. He absolutely killed it in Django which I just saw yesterday. Not only should he have gotten nominated, he should have won (full disclosure I haven’t seen all the films). I never forgot I was watching Cristoph Waltz on screen but LDC blew me away. His perfomance was even overlooked by this site which made it all the more surprising.

@JTRO: Exact opposite. I never forgot that I was watching DiCaprio play a part and read a script (sometimes I swore I even heard Tarantino shouting directions in the background), Waltz made me believe that he really was this oddly hypocritical former dentist bounty hunter.

It’ll be weird in about 20 years when old Oscar voters have died off and we won’t have to wonder why an arty French film (in Vince’s eloquent words) “about old people slowly dying” is up for as many awards as Amour is. I eagerly await that time.

I’m sure it’s great, but watching the trailer alone, and seeing the last 32 seconds (OF THE 1:43 TRAILER) be just nothing but music followed by a guy silently sitting in a chair, I thought to myself “That’s gonna win a lot of awards, and I’m never going to see it.”

The Academy’s love of pretentious artsy crap will never die, and for some reason subtitles and a lack of anything actually happening on screen will continue to be badges of honor. In 1994 I thought “Pulp Fiction is a watershed. Art can be entertaining, violence can be art, and the term ‘dead-n***er storage’ will usher in a new age when the Hollywood establishment gives up pretense in favor of innovation.” 20 years later and we’re still having the same goddamned debate.

Someone made the good point to me the other day that if a foreign picture is nominated for an award, it’s been through the European festivals and already received ridiculous acclaim over there so it comes to America with an already established positive critical aura surrounding it.

That being said, you’re absolutely right about the subtitles and the lack of action.

History nerd fact: Russian high society in the 19th century was massively anglophile. They would have all spoken English and French to one another, and a lot of them probably would have tried for British accents.

I’m running the risk here of getting my internet teeth kicked in here with this crowd, but seriously, did you all think Looper was that wonderful? Holy crap I thought it was just bad sci fi that can’t even stick to the rules it invents for narrative convenience. Give me a time travel story that embraces the temporal paradox rather than begging us to ignore it (Primer, Time Crimes, Triangle). Yeah, I know I’m the dude with the confederate flag t-shirt skipping through Harlem, but I just had to say it.

Primer was trippy as fuck. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched it about a dozen times and I still have trouble getting all the timelines straight. That said, much of the dialogue was (intentionally) gibberish to non-engineers, and you can’t expect a hollywood movie to annoy its audience by doing that.

I think Looper built up a head of steam to get where it’s at now. I liked it a lot but it was the Drive of this year: I would be upset if it beat someone more deserving but I’m pissed it wasn’t recognized.

Looper was a good, relatively solid “refreshing” sci-fi film. And probably should have been in the Screenplay category. That being said it wasn’t exactly the most amazing thing in the world and the kid during the second half was extra annoying.

The best times I had at movies this year were Looper, Cabin in the Woods, Chronicle, Django and ZDT. Even if it’s a genre story, give me something a *little* different, a *little* unpredictable, and I’m happy.

I need to watch it again, but I was kinda on the same track as you after the first viewing. It was good and entertaining, but for the time travel part I really need another viewing to see if there were obvious or subtle problems with how it was written.

I definitely wouldn’t put it in best movie, but I’d go with best original screenplay.

I don’t understand all this hubbub about Magic Mike. It’s a cross between Showgirls and Boogie Nights. It’s just not that good. and McConaughey is quickly becoming this generation’s Al PAcino. A one dimensional tour-de-force of overacting.

Which is why the “crossed with Showgirls” part is key. Boogie Nights was awesome because of John Reilly and Burt Reynolds and Don Cheadle. Magic Mike is like the Hallmark Channel version of this because the cast stinks and the story is sappy.

As you all know, I have personally boycotted the Academy Awards ever since “Team America: World Police” didn’t get nominated for Best Picture in 2004. So now, whenever I find myself pondering whichever commercial entertainment product deserves the blue ribbon for the previous 12 month period, I stop and ask myself “WWOUD?”

I can’t believe the Razzies now has more (MOAR?) credibility than the Oscars. McConaughey should just crash the ceremony shirtless; give those old ladies who camp out for red carpet seats something to really swoon over.

I realize Film Drunk is not a site filled with high level film criticism, but it makes sense to me for the person writing this to actually SEE the movies being discussed before having such a forum. You haven’t even heard of The Impossible? Terrible article.

Let me try to be the white knight to the Reputation of Flight’s princess.
I know it’s sorta after school special, but it’s an impressive piece of writing/acting. Saw it opening night, and that one scene where Denzel is debating whether or not to take a drink from the mini-bar…I’ve never seen an audience so involved in a character’s decision. He deciding whether or not to take a drink was fucking suspense!
Although the female part in that reeked. And it was a little cliched. Still succeeded more than it failed.

“Leslie Mann” is fantastic in pretty much everything and beasts of the southern wild isn’t a good movie. Yeah wow you actually get paid for this? Further proof of the dumbing down of America. Idiocracy at its finest!

So I haven’t seen Snow White and the Huntsman all the way through, but i’m sad that its okay computer graphics got nominated instead of Skyfall’s awesome effects where they did loads of it without computer graphics (and it looked that much cooler because of it). Case in point, here is a daily mail photo of them staging a giant fireball at the house at the end. [www.cinemablend.com]

Just saw Django Unchained and can’t understand how QT’s best film this century doesn’t even get him a director nod. Jamie Foxx should win best actor, nevermind not get nominated, I much preferred him to Day Lewis’ performance as Count Chocula. No noms for Sam Jackson or Leo D? The academy doesn’t care about ethnics.

Christoph Waltz is an excellent actor but his performance in “Django Unchained” as a bounty hunter in the old American West is a variation of his well deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar performance as his Nazi, jew hunter in “Inglorious Basterds”, just 2 years ago. My complaint about his recent Oscar win is that this was not a supporting performance. Waltz spoke more dialogue than any other actor in that film. It would have been fine if Leonardo DeCaprio had been nominated in this category for his smaller role in the movie. The supporting awards should be determined by an actor’s length of time in a movie, not by their publicists.